If you don't have a digital-video recorder, now is the time to put one on your Christmas wish list.

It's the most profoundly life-changing gizmo on Santa's sled, and once you have one you'll rave it about it to strangers as I have for the past several years.

Normally, it would require the time-shifting prowess of a TiVo to lock in three solid hours of prime-time television, but even real-timers have that to look forward to tonight (Sunday, Nov. 23).

First, at 7 p.m. on WVUE-Channel 8, comes "24: Redemption," a two-hour Jack Bauer movie that intends to bridge the looooong minutes and hours between the last fresh episode of the Fox drama "24" (May 21, 2007) and the next (Jan. 11, 2009).

Set and shot in Africa, "Redemption" is slam-bang, squirm-inducing TV event that's much more than a super-sized episode of "24."

As the film opens, Jack Bauer (Keifer Sutherland) is on the lam from his own country, helping a black-ops mentor oversee a school for lost boys while revolutionary unrest roils the countryside around them.

Meanwhile, back home, a new U.S. President (played by Cherry Jones) prepares for her inauguration. Robert Carlyle, Gil Bellows and Jon Voight also costar.

The action unfolds in real time, just like a regular "24" episode.

"It's on the clock," said executive producer Jon Cassar during a July TV Tour interview. "We talked about it not being on the clock, but we all got very nervous, so we stayed true to what we do.

"This was really exciting because we got to prove in a way that the format that we have works also in a 2-hour block."

The made-for works so well that future similar projects - including a possible feature film - now seem like a sure thing.

"Because now that hole's open," Cassar said. "We could stay in that hole from year to year. Jack in Japan would be astounding. They are fanatical over there about Jack Bauer. The guy over there that does Jack Bauer's voice, that dubs Jack Bauer's voice ... can't walk down the street, because he's mobbed. You don't even see his face. He just does the voice and he's mobbed. So you can imagine Jack Bauer running down a street in Tokyo.

"Television, at this point, because of the state it's in, is looking for new, looking for different. And this is different."

Also TV-different, at 9 p.m. on Comedy Central, is "A Colbert Christmas: The Greatest Gift of All."

A sometimes-sacrilegious lampoon of musical network-TV Christmas specials of the distant past, the story places Stephen Colbert in a snowy cabin.

Under grizzly-bear siege and unable to get to the taping of his Christmas special, Colbert entertains a series of guests, including Elvis Costello (as himself), Toby Keith (same), John Legend (same), Jon Stewart (same), Feist (as an angel) and Willie Nelson (as a Wise Man bearing herbal gifts).

I laughed out loud all the way through, starting with Keith's entrance.

Toting a camo-colored assault rifle, the country-music star drops by while hunting deer in the woods near Colbert's cabin, then pauses to sing a don't-mess-with-my-creche song titled, "The War on Christmas."